International response to the Rwandan genocide

The failure of the international community to effectively respond to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been the subject of significant criticism. During a period of around 100 days, between 7 April and 15 July, an estimated 500,000-1,100,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutu, were murdered by Interahamwe militias.

A United Nations peacekeeping force – UNAMIR – had been stationed in Rwanda since October 1993, but once the mass slaughter began, the UN and the Belgian Government elected to withdraw troops rather than reinforce the contingent and deploy a larger force. The piecemeal peacekeeping force on the ground was both unable and unauthorised to make any real attempt at stopping the violence, and their role was reduced to seeking a political agreement between the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Interim Hutu Power government, as well as protecting selected havens for Tutsi who were seeking refuge, such as Amahoro Stadium and the Hôtel des Mille Collines. The inaction of the UN in the face of genocide is widely considered one of the UN’s most shameful moments.

Background

Main article: Rwandan genocide

Particularly since the era of Belgian colonialism, where previously fluid ethnic identities were crystallised through administrative selection and the institution of identity cards, divisions between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority had been the source of frequently violent political tensions. Shortly before independence, the Tutsi ruling class instituted by the Belgians was overthrown by the Hutu revolution in 1959. Over the following decades, multiple instances of ethnically-motivated pogroms and massacres took place, and as a result many Tutsi – over 300,000 – fled Rwanda to neighbouring countries.

In 1990, a group of 4,000 Rwandan exiles, the Rwandan Patrotic Front, advanced into Rwanda from Uganda, commencing the Rwandan Civil War. A peace agreement, the Arusha Accords, was signed in 1993, bringing most of the fighting to an end. The RPF were given positions in a Broad-Based Transitional Government (BBTG) and in the national army.⁽ Prunier 1999, pp. 190–91). To monitor the peace agreement, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), a peacekeeping force, arrived in the country and the RPF were given a base in the national parliament building in Kigali, for use during the setting up of the BBTG. (Dallaire 2005, pp. 126–31).

On 6 April 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down over Kigali, killing him, as well as the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira. The event served as a catalyst for mass killings of Tutsi and moderate Hutu by the Interahamwe – militias supported by politicians and other key figures who were part of the Hutu Power movement.

The movement recruited and pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects, and other weapons and encouraged them to rape, maim, and kill their Tutsi neighbors and to destroy or steal their property. The RPF restarted its offensive soon after Habyarimana's assassination. It rapidly seized control of the northern part of the country and captured Kigali about 100 days later in mid-July, bringing an end to the genocide. The overall death toll of the Genocide is disputed, but most scholars estimate between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi deaths, and up to 1.1 million overall deaths.

International involvement

Belgium

Belgium was a colonial power in Rwanda and had a deep political connection with the government even after decolonization. Belgium was one of the first contributors to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), along with Bangladesh, contributing around 400 troops.

After the assassination of President Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, the Radio des Milles Collines spread a rumour that Belgian soldiers from UNAMIR had caused the attack. The Rwandan presidential guard captured and assassinated Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, her husband, and the ten Belgian soldiers assigned to protect them. Lt. Thierry Lottin had contact with General Dallaire about the severity of the situation while protecting the Prime Minister, but Dallaire initially did not see the urge to retreat. The dramatic episode drove Belgium into a depressive consternation, which entailed its disengagement from UNAMIR. As to justify its decision, Belgium carried the UN, along with a spiraling number of countries that were leaving UNAMIR. An informer, known as "Jean-Pierre" by Dallaire, had revealed to Dallaire that the people behind the genocide were counting on the fact that western nations would not tolerate casualties from their own countries and would then pull out of the mission.

In 7 April, Belgium began to demand an extension of the mandate of UNAMIR to evacuate the 1,520 Belgian residents. The intentions of the Belgian ambassador were provided in the Belgian Senate report of 12 April 1996: "We are preoccupied above all with the personnel who have worked for us, of certain people associated with the process of democratization, with clergymen." The report continued: "Finally, operation 'Silver Back' began on April 10 and will be completed on April 15 when the last Belgian civilians will have left Rwanda."

After the genocide, a traumatized Belgium began a parliamentary reflection, with the Senate starting the Commission d'enquête parlementaire (Parliamentary Inquiry Commission), which inquired and composed a parliamentary report.

On 6 April 2000, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt attended the ceremony commemorating the sixth anniversary of the genocide in Kigali. He took the occasion to make apologies and took on "the responsibility of my country, according to what we have learnt afterwards in the name of my country and of my people, I beg your pardon."

Canada

In July 1993, UNAMIR Force Commander General Roméo Dallaire received little information on the background of the conflict in Rwanda. Upon requesting current intelligence, he was denied and given little access to the information. Forced to proceed on his mission blindly because of the lack of information Canada was given, the mission was planned poorly, especially as they were provided with inexperienced experts in economic, political, and human rights operational planning. That came as a result of military operations having ignored requirements for long-term solutions to the causes of the Rwandan conflict. Their mandate allowed them only to monitor the implementation of the Arusha Accords and to support the transitional government. The mission was also restricted with little funding or time, and force was prohibited from using except in self-defence.

After the 1994 shooting down of President Habyarimana's plane, Dallaire called for reinforcement and was denied. By April 10, it was clear the non-battle pole strategy had failed to prevent the genocide. Belgium withdrew its forces after a number of their soldiers were massacred, and most the UN force followed shortly afterwards. UNAMIR eventually took under protection 40,000 Rwandans despite its strict mandate. The Peacemaking (Chapter VII) UNAMIR II deployed once the airport had been retaken and forces could begin to arrive (UN ARCH). Canadian (Operation Lance), British (Operation Gabriel), and Australian (Operation Tamor) forces were among the first western nations to arrive and join the small UN force and begin assisting Rwandan in achieving peace and healing, including intervening in the genocide.

Canada’s new role in genocide prevention was to take action under the UN Charter as it considered appropriate in an attempt to prevent and suppress the violent acts of genocide. With the use of a bipolar strategy, military defense prevention and suppression, Canadian policy makers could respond when it may be the only practical way of stopping genocides.

China

To honour the lost and the injured, the Rwandan embassy and Chinese communities organized events in Beijing and a few Rwandan communities. Memorials were marked with silence, prayers, songs and presentations on the history of Rwanda and expressed the hope that the world could learn from the tragedy.

France

From October 1990 to December 1993, the French Army led Opération Noroit. France openly supported the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana against the Rwandese Patriotic Front rebels and contributed a "French presence to the limit of direct engagement", according to the title of a chapter of the report of the French parliamentary mission. The operation allowed the French to organise and train Rwandan troops, who subsequently formed the Interahamwe militias or even future militiamen.

France, in agreement with the international community, endorsed the peace process of the negotiations of the Arusha Accords between the Rwandan government, the opposition and the exiles of the Rwandan Patriotic Front..

In December 1993, France used the arrival of the UNAMIR, which had come to the implementation of the Arusha Accords, as a front, according to diverse sources, while some military technicians continued to operate in Rwanda. A couple of Frenchmen were notably assassinated, reportedly by the RPF, in the hours that followed the attack and were engaged in setting up sophisticated electronic equipment.

On 8 April 1994, two days after the attack against Habyarimana, France launched Opération Amaryllis to permit the secured evacuation of 1500 residents, mainly Westerners. The Rwandan survivors have strongly criticised the operation; according to numerous witnesses, it did not include the evacuation of the Rwandans threatened with the massacres even when they were employed by the French authorities. France also evacuated dignitaries from the Habyarimana regime, and on 11 April, 97 children from the orphanage protected by Madame Habyarimana were evacuated. According to several sources, several dignitaries close to the Habyarimana family were also evacuated. Operation Amaryllis terminated on 14 April.

UNAMIR's Kigali sector commander, Belgian Col. Luc Marchal, reported to the BBC that one of the French planes that was supposedly participating in the evacuation operation arrived at 0345 on 9 April with several boxes of ammunition. The boxes were unloaded and transported by FAR vehicles to the Kanombe camp, where the Rwandese presidential guard was quartered. The French government has categorically denied the shipment by saying that the planes carried only French military personnel and material for the evacuation.

France was very active at the UN in the discussions about the reinforcement of the UNAMIR in May 1994. Despite the inertia of the international community, France obtained the backing of the UN to lead Opération Turquoise from June 22 to August 22, 1994. Its declared goal was to protect the "populations threatened" by the genocide or the military conflict between the FPR and the temporary Rwandan government. No hierarchy between both types of threatened people was established. Both parties of the military conflict assimilated them, and the system was organised to remain neutral between the two different groups. The system was humanitarian in some cases, notably during a cholera epidemic in refugee camps in Zaïre, now Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it was the source of many distinct controversies surrounding the French role at the time of Operation Noroit and the criticism of France facilitating the desertion of those responsible for the genocide and a massive refugee movement of the population to Congo (around two million people). France has accused the FPR of having provoked half of the movements by refusing the French authorities' advice not to get involved in the northwest of the country.

France, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, has been accused of a role that some of those answerable to France refute and claim that Operation Turquoise was an exemplary humanitarian intervention. Some use as context that in supporting a group that would become genocidal and, according to the French parliamentary report, did not hide its genocidal intentions, France had favoured the start of the genocide.

As the outgrowth of a press campaign, especially the articles written by the journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupéry that appeared in 1994 and in 1998 in the French newspaper Le Figaro, the French Parliament decided to examine the actions of France in Rwanda by using a parliamentary information mission for Rwanda. Some French Non-governmental organisations that specialise in Rwanda would have preferred a parliamentary enquiry mission, whose judicial powers would have been more extensive, to find the truth. After several months of work, the president of the parliamentary mission, former Defence Minister Paul Quilès, concluded that France was "not guilty" (December 1998).

21st century

Ten years later, in 2004, books, films and radio and television programmes brought the controversies surrounding France's role in Rwanda back to life. Unsatisfied by the conclusions of the report from the parliamentary mission for Rwanda, some citizens and NGOs have formed a citizens' enquiry commission. After a week of work in Paris, their "provisional conclusions" were read on 27 March 2004 at a conference that they organised the enclave of the French Assemblée nationale in the presence of one of two of the original people who had publicly stated the findings of the parliamentary mission, the former deputy Pierre Brana. On April 7, 2004, a serious diplomatic incident took place between France and Rwanda during the commemoration of the genocide in Kigali. In the course of the ceremonies, the Rwandan president publicly accused France of not having apologised for its role in Rwanda but desiring to participate in the ceremonies.

In July 2004, the ministers of Foreign Affairs from both countries convened to "share the work of a memory piece" about the genocide. Rwanda announced several days later, according to a dispatch from Agence France-Presse from August 2, 2004, that "the council of ministers has adopted the organic law project to aid in the creation of the independent national commission charged with assembling proof of the implication of France in the genocide perpetrated in Rwanda in 1994". The French Minister of Foreign Affairs "took action" for the creation of the Rwandan commission.

On 22 October 2004, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda officially demanded that the "Republic of France" allow former Ambassador Jean Michel Marlaud and one of his military representatives, Officer Jean Jacques Maurin to respond to the demand of the defence of the presumed mastermind of the genocide, Colonel Bagosora, pending judgement. Bagosra was the first Rwandan officer to have graduated from the École des Officiers in France.

On 27 November 2004, in a televised debate on France 3 after the showing of the French film Tuez les Tous ('Kill Them All'), created by three students of political science, the president of the parliamentary mission for information for Rwanda, Paul Quilès, stated for the first time "France asks to be pardoned by the people of Rwanda, but not by their government".

On 6 April 2014, Rwandan President Paul Kagame repeated the charges against France as "direct role of Belgium and France in the political preparation for the genocide" in an interview with Jeune Afrique magazine. He also accused French soldiers who took part in a military humanitarian mission in the south of the former Belgian colony of being both accomplices and "actors" in the bloodbath.

Rwandan report of 2008

On 5 August 2008, an independent Rwandan commission said that France was aware of preparations for the 1994 Rwanda genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators. It accused France of training Hutu militias responsible for the slaughter, helping to plan the genocide and participating in the killings. The report accused 33 senior French military and political officials on Tuesday of involvement in the genocide. Among those named were President François Mitterrand, Prime Minister Édouard Balladur; Foreign Minister Alain Juppé; and his chief aide, Dominique de Villepin. "French soldiers themselves directly were involved in assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis," said the report, which was compiled by a team of investigators from the Justice Ministry.

United States

After the events surrounding the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia one year earlier, the United States refused to provide requested material aid to Rwanda. France, China, and Russia opposed involvement in what was seen as an "internal affair." Dallaire was directly "taken to task," in his words, for even suggesting that UNAMIR should raid Hutu militants' weapons caches, whose location had been disclosed to him by a government informant. The UN failed to respond adequately to Dallaire's urgent requests.

The role of the United States was directly inspired by the defeat undergone during the 1993 intervention in Somalia. Both President Bill Clinton and US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright repeatedly refused to take action, and government documents that were declassified in 2004 indicate that the Clinton administration knew that Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify US inaction. Intelligence reports obtained using the Freedom of Information Act show that the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter had reached its peak.

For two months, from April to May 1994, the US government argued over the word genocide, which is banned by the Convention for the Prevention and the Repression of Crime and Genocide, which had been adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948. Senior US officials privately used the term genocide within 16 days of the beginning of the killings but chose not to do so publicly since Clinton had already decided not to intervene.

In 2001, the US government declassified documents that confirm the US attitude, which had not taken into account the reality of the situation that started in January 1994. Clinton and Albright later expressed regret for their inaction. Clinton went on to provide major funding for the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. He also visited Rwanda in 1998 and 2005, apologised both times, and said that he "expressed regret for what he says was his 'personal failure' to prevent the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people." Moreover, through the Clinton Foundation, he has attempted amends by sponsoring initiatives to help rebuild Rwanda.

Other African states

The OAU, which is now the African Union, created a report on the genocide in 2000. Before the UNAMIR mission led by General Roméo Dallaire (military) and Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh (civilian), the OAU had indeed sent a Neutral Military Observation Group, known by its French initials as GOMN.

United Nations

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has accepted its responsibility to prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

After the death of ten Belgium soldiers, the United Nations reported the removal of most 2,500 peacekeepers. Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy stated that "none present could look back without feeling guilt and devastation at the lack to help the Rwandan civilians at their time in need" (BBC News). Even as the council stopped short and delivered an apology, 15 council members focused on a report about lessons to be learned that was based on the lack of support and help in Africa. The United Nations presents a core policy and a great challenge to prevent another round of genocidal violence. The councils have already evidently learned how to bring peace from lessons of past failures. Rwandan Ambassador Joseph Mutaboba has welcomed the report and its apologies and stated that the council could do more, but it is not too late. In 1994, the Security Council had appointed General Kofi Annan to the head of United Nations Peacekeeping operations. Annan commissioned the report and was publicly criticised for not delivering warnings about the upcoming genocide. He has accepted the conclusions based on recorded reports.

The UN has been criticized for inaction. In terms of responsibility, the UN has retrospectively been considered to be highest, followed by France, which moved in too late and ended up protecting the genocidaires and thus permanently destabilising the region. Next, the United States actively worked against an effective UNAMIR and became involved only to aid the same Hutu refugee population and the genocidaires as France and thus left the genocide survivors to flounder.

On April 12, 1994, The Guardian stated that viewing a woman "being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete",

...none of the troops moved. 'It's not our mandate,' said one, leaning against his jeep as he watched the condemned woman, the driving rain splashing at his blue United Nations badge. The 3,000 foreign troops now in Rwanda are no more than spectators to the savagery which aid workers say has seen the massacre of 15,000 people.

Michael Barnett, who was a senior official at the UN at that time, has provided evidence that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) failed to pass on to the Security Council information that could have bolstered a case for intervention. The information included the location of Interhamwe arms caches and information before the genocide that the Interhamwe was compiling a list of all Tutsis in Kigali. The informer was Jean-Pierre Twatzinze, who had been asked to compile the list. According to Barnett, UN inaction stemmed from its desire not to get involved in a potentially-risky operation for public relations that could damage the prospects for future peacebuilding operations since 18 UN troops had recently been killed in Somalia, despite the capacity of UN troops to save thousands of lives. "For many at the UN", Barnett wrote, the moral compass pointed "away from and not toward Rwanda."

Arms shipments

From France

In the early morning of January 22, 1994, a DC-8 aircraft loaded with armaments from France, including 90 boxes of Belgian-made 60 mm mortars, was confiscated by UNAMIR at Kigali International Airport. The delivery was in violation of the cease-fire clauses of the Arusha Accords, which prohibited introduction of arms into the area during the transition period. General Dallaire put the arms under joint UNAMIR-Rwandan army guard. Formally recognizing this point, the French government argued that the delivery stemmed from an old contract and hence was technically legal. Dallaire was forced to give up control over the aircraft.

From Mil-Tec Corporation Ltd (UK)

Mil-Tec Corporation Ltd, a UK company, was involved in arms supplies to the Hutu regime at least from June 1993 to mid-July 1994. Mil-Tec had been paid $4.8 million by the regime in return for invoices of $6.5 million for the arms sent. The manager of Mil-Tec, Anoop Vidyarthi, was described as a Kenyan Asian who owned a travel company in North London and was in business with Rakeesh Kumar Gupta. They both fled the UK shortly after the revelations.

• 6 June 1993 ($549,503 of ammunition from Tel Aviv to Kigali);
• 17–18 April 1994 ($853,731 of ammunition from Tel Aviv to Goma);
• 22–25 April 1994 ($681,200 of ammunition and grenades from Tel Aviv to Goma);
• 29 April - 3 May 1994 ($942,680 of ammunition, grenades, mortars and rifles from Tirana to Goma);
• 9 May 1994 ($1,023,840 of rifles, ammunition, mortars and other items from Tirana to Goma);
• 18–20 May 1994 ($1,074,549 of rifles, ammunition, mortars, rocket propelled grenades and other items from Tirana to Goma);
• 13–18 July 1994 ($753,645 of ammunition and rockets from Tirana to Kinshasa).

See also

• Mogadishu Line

External links

• "Tous complices du génocide au Rwanda"
• Voices of Rwanda The Rwanda Testimony Film Project